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by Sarah

The One with All the Guests

June 29, 2016 in recap

Surprise!

Why have regular book club when you can have PARTY book club?

It’s all the elements of book club you love — food, alcohol, and discussions about book titles — with added people!

For a limited time only, your book club can be changed to PARTY book club. For only $9.95, PARTY book club throws in 6 new people to help spice up your book club experience!

But wait! There’s more!

Act now, and we’ll also throw in extra food, tons of excited conversation, and NEW PAINT!

That’s right! With PARTY book club, you could have book club hosted in a house that’s in the MIDDLE of being PAINTED!

This limited-time offer for PARTY book club is only good for the month of June, because if Sarah repeated it too often, her friends would probably desert book club forever. So act now, before this too-good-to-be-true offer is too far gone!

 

Real book club notes:

Sarah texts Des and Jen in the afternoon to let them know extra people will be at book club.

They show up and are immediately surrounded by a swarm of Sarah’s family — her parents, grand parents, and sister — with the fun addition of new paint being everywhere, a toddler mopey from daycare, and a meal being planned that’s big enough for all nine.

Luckily all is fine — Jen even livens up the party by bringing adorable flowers for both Sarah and Des to help them celebrate their half birthdays (Thanks, Jen!). Everyone eats, we talk about all kinds of books (barely anything about the book we actually read, although a little speculation about Poehler and Arnett’s divorce), and then everything splits into chaos for dessert and cleanup.

Des and Jen were good enough to stay after Sarah’s family left, dutifully aww-ing at the backyard yard work and then scheduling the next book club. Both were kind to say that Sarah’s family was nice and the food was good. Next book club will be more low key 🙂

 

MOST IMPORTANT – JEN FIXED THE WEBSITE! THREE CHEERS FOR JEN!

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by Sarah

March Recap

March 30, 2016 in recap

We read Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore and that book glows in the dark.

That’s literally all I remember because I am the worst. According to our calendar it was on March 29, so there’s that.

I actually don’t feel that bad because technically I’m posting three recaps in one day and that’s pretty amazing.

Hooray book club!

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by Sarah

Thanksgiving Post!

November 24, 2015 in recap

I got to host bookclub yesterday, in November, and you know what that means — EASY HOLIDAY THEME!

Things we are THANKFUL for after our Thanksgiving bookclub:

  1. We are thankful for books. 
    We love books (obvs) and are thankful they exist. This month’s host, Sarah, is also thankful that book club gives her the chance to read books. For example, this month we read a kind of weird book, How to Tell Toledo from the Night Sky by Lydia Netzer. Sarah broke book club rules by picking it (because she hadn’t read it beforehand and therefore couldn’t really recommend it), but she really wanted to read it, so thank you book club. (Also, it was kind of weird, we all admitted, and Jen said that she kind of saw the ending coming.)
  2. We are thankful for food. 
    As a book club, we have cycled through many traditions — making CDs, sharing current events, creating thoughtful book club questions — and many have fallen to the wayside. But one tradition that will never fade is our tradition of enjoying food. Whether it’s Des’ famous wonton appetizers, Jen’s fruit-and-toppings desserts, or Sarah’s sneak-veggies-in casseroles, we’re nothing if not consistent.
  3. We are thankful for family. 
    Love is in the air, thanks to Des and her happy beau, and we are all thrilled to celebrate Lucas and all his wonderfulness. Plus, there was a bit of a scary moment at book club when Jen had to leave early because her brother Mike was not feeling well and had concerning symptoms. Luckily he’s fine, everyone’s fine, we’re thankful for heath and family, and happy holidays.

Until next time!

#shortestrecapever?

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by Sarah

The Story of Science — August Recap

September 22, 2015 in recap

It’s September. September 22nd, even. The last day of summer…

And I’m writing the August recap.

Here’s another factoid — I also just created the group space for August bookclub. That’s right — the group space: the place where we add questions about the book, current event, music suggestions (except no one does that), basically all the things we want to save and then talk about during book club; I JUST MADE THE GROUP SPACE for the August book club… that happened a month ago.

It was mainly for posterity. Didn’t want there to not be a group for that book… even if we don’t use the group.

ANYWAY. It’s the last day of summer, I’m more than three weeks too late even posting the group space, and I’m going to talk about August book club.

Or…

BETTER IDEA.

Let’s talk about alternate universes for a second.

Like, how there is possibly an alternate universe where I don’t procrastinate and do things in an appropriate time frame.

There is possibly an alternative universe where I take scrupulous notes during book club so that I can post scientifically detailed recaps.

There is possibly an alternative universe where Jen, Des and I are actually famous book authors and we only have book clubs to talk about our own published works because we’re just that amazing — and then no one has to write recaps because THEY’RE OUR OWN BOOKS, PEOPLE. How do you like them apples.

 

Of course, there is possibly an alternative universe where Jen, Des and I aren’t friends. A universe where we didn’t start book club at all. A universe where we didn’t meet in that fateful graduate school class. A universe where our lives never intersected, our friendships never started, and our nights of book loving and food enjoying and life bashing and girl-power supporting and movie preview watching… none of those ever happened.

 

SO. In the grand scheme of things, even though I post recaps way last minute and maybe this last time didn’t even remember to make a group, even though I’m running out of ways to be quippy about my lackluster recaps, and even though our book clubs aren’t quite as detailed and well run as they were in year one… even though ALL THOSE THINGS…

it’s still better than the alternate universe where we’re not friends.

So I say we just accept this one for what it is and embrace messy recaps and late groups.

 

Oh! And before I forget… we had a book club in August. We went to brunch at Busy Bee, sat outside, talked about The Story of Science and how it missed the boat on more recent scientists, then gossiped about all things boys and work and family and clothes and life. 

 

I love my friends. Thanks, universe.

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by Sarah

Three Wishes – May Book Club

May 21, 2015 in recap

We read Three Wishes, the second book by author Liane Moriarty that our club has enjoyed. (First: What Alice Forgot.)

Three Wishes received a warm thumbs-up, which was nice for me since I normally pick depressing books that our club begrudgingly recognizes as good literary works (while also wishing their sad stories hadn’t been chosen in the first place).

For our book club discussion, we talked about the three sisters, who was dealt the worst hand, the adorable pre-chapter memory stories, and the love story of the parents. It was a short-but-sweet book club discussion, which fits the book.

Appropriately, here are my three wishes after our May book club:

  1. That I could see my lovely friends more. 
    Jen and Des are seriously awesome. Whether I’m hearing about wedding day details or learning about dating-world craziness, I love spending time with these two and wish we could hang out more! Too bad we all live at three different corners of Wake County.
  2. That I wasn’t allergic to pollen. (Or Des.)
    I spent the latter half of our book club sneezing into tissues. Jen and Des were nice enough to eat outside so we could try out our new patio furniture, but it’s still allergy season, and OMG was I dying. We joked that I might be allergic to Des (or, at least, to her clothes if she had recently cuddled a cat or two. or five.), but I think it was outside. Thanks for putting up with my AAaachoos, guys.
  3. That every meal started with chips and salsa and ended with strawberries and whip cream. 
    I feel like that reads like the start of a dirty joke, but it’s not. Des brought chips and salsa (yum!) and Jen brought strawberries and whip cream to top a delish low-carb pound cake. Everyone loved the whipped cream, especially Sawyer. I made a huge chicken casserole that we’ve been enjoying all week BECAUSE LEFTOVERS ARE GOOD FOR YOU! (Shoutout to your hubs, Mrs. McFarland.)

Other highlights included bachelorette-party-recap stories, discussion of upcoming movies (summer blockbuster time FTW!), and brief blurbs about kilt-gate and wife bonuses.

Now, everyone go die of shock, because I wrote this post like a MILLION YEARS BEFORE IT WAS DUE.

 

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by Sarah

Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

March 10, 2015 in recap

Can I get a pass on this one, because (1) book club was less than two weeks ago, so I haven’t had NEARLY the amount of procrastination time I’m supposed to, and (2) I was supposed to have time to write this today but I was bombarded with last-minute meetings, which also isn’t a great excuse since I shouldn’t have left this to the last minute. But ANYWAY.

In the interest of being out of time, I’m going to sort-of-but-not-really plagiarize. Since our book, Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, was fantastically British, here’s our Saloon recap from the mouthes of the Brits. (I cite my sources, so it’s not really plagiarizing.)

Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill

We tried and tried and tried to have book club, but sickness and snow kept delaying. Still, we were successful, albeit on the last day of the month, on a Saturday, with a brunch-style book club.

Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus.
Margaret Thatcher

Well sorry, Margaret, but the pop-lit book we read was well liked, so while it probably was in line with a fashionable consensus… the consensus was that this book was more adorable than a picnic in Hyde Park.

When you read a novel, your own imagery is the most important. It’s what makes reading such a wonderful thing.
Daniel Craig

Daniel Craig, you could not possibly be more beautiful. But this is about the book. That we read. God, the thought of a book-loving 007 is too much. What did we read again?

The internet has been a boon and a curse for teenagers.
J. K. Rowling

Well JK, we enjoyed the internet as a way to catch up on a very small amount of current events, to oogle at obscenely ridiculous Facebook posts, and to watch movie trailers.

Food is so freaking good.
Henry VIII

Okay, he probably didn’t exactly say that. But some form of it, I’m sure. He had gout, for chrisssakes. Anyway, that’s good to pull in because we had pancakes and sausage crescents and strange-but-good Cincinnati-style ghetta (guetta? getta?), which was a brunch-style first for Saloon.

Horray saloon!

 

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by Sarah

Your Brain at Work—October Book Club

October 16, 2014 in recap

I used my brain to come up with this post strategy. Thanks, David Rock!

Book club was:

image1
then

then
image5
then
image4
then

then
image8 image7 image6
then

then

then

ICE CREAM!

ICE CREAM!

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by Sarah

The Storied Life of AJ Finkery—July Bookclub

August 25, 2014 in recap

It’s the day before book club and the recap post for the previous month is just now going up… bet you can guess who’s writing it.

This guy. (Well, this girl.)

 

Thanks for the reminder, Des. I try to pretend I’ve got it together, but I appreciate that it may be hard to be my friend sometimes…

 

Anyway! On with the belated recap.

Our last book club was held on July 22nd.

Thank you Google Calendar.

 

I either cooked a crock pot or casserole, because those are the only things that new moms cook, apparently.

 

We started talking about the book…

…The Storied Life of AJ Finkery. We all agreed it was pretty good. We also got some short story ideas for December, if we do the short story thing again, since it referenced a bunch of those.

It was also fun reading a book about a book store. Kind of like book porn for book lovers…

We talked about current events for a while, but not for too long, because Jen is the only one that posted. Poor Jen…

Our favorites from the Current Events section included: (1) “If Google was a Guy”…

and  (2) the awesome tiny girl gymnast.

How is that even real.

It was a short book club overall. After chatting, we enjoyed some ice cream that Jen brought over.

ICE CREAMMMMMMM

then we called it a night pretty early, which was convenient because Jen could go spend time with her beau for their 6-month anniversary.

but seriously, congrats Cam and Jen 🙂

Anyway, at this point in my recap, I normally promise to do better. Like, maybe I’ll be less awful and post current events before next book club! But since next book club is tomorrow…

 

I just hope that everyone knows, despite my attempts to demonstrate otherwise through my embarrassingly awful book club recaps, I do love book club, the chance to hang out with my friends, and the different books we read.

Until next time!

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by Sarah

April Recap

May 21, 2014 in recap

Well, apparently I’m competitive, because when Jen double-dog dared someone in her last post to beat her 20-minutes-prior publish record, I tried to do just that.

Okay, that’s a lie. I didn’t really try. I actually came to the website to look over any articles in the group space before book club tonight. I noticed on the homepage that March’s recap was the most recent, and I genuinely thought, “OMG, what slacker hasn’t posted yet?” This slacker, turns out.

But is that really a surprise? Through haiku-abbreviated posts and MadLibs inspired shortcuts, I am forever looking for a way to post creatively but quickly to the recap site. Des is the queen of timely posts, Jen is the president of detailed posts, and I am the great and powerful, slack-tastic loser, bringing up the caboose. Choo-choo!

Given the fact that I didn’t even remember that I was the one hosting in April, there’s not a prayer for me remembering specifics. I know we ate one of my frozen casseroles, from the great casserole storage project that I started pre-Sawyer. I think it was the last enchilada one. I also know that we read our first romance novel, A Marriage Bargain (…The Marriage Bargain? I’m so lazy I’m not even checking at this point.). Best of all, I distinctly remember that we were all a bit stressed and tired, and that instead of putting ourselves through the necessary steps of Book Club we opted instead to gossip and snack while Matt and Sawyer hung out upstairs. I remember it being a fun night, and I remember my friends leaving at around 8 without complaining about the extremely early Glova household bedtime, both of which were very nice.

I love book club. I love writing. Why I can’t bring myself to write better about book club is beyond me… I guess it’s like any combination. I love running, and I love cheeseburgers, but I don’t necessary want to run and eat a cheeseburger. Still, I once again promise to do better in the future. Otherwise, I’m afraid Jen and Des will eventually ban me from posting recaps, because at this point Sawyer could probably do better. (He has just started grabbing his toes… so clearly he’s a genius.)

<3

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by Sarah

Little Women – January 2013

January 21, 2014 in recap

And for this month’s edition of Sarah’s-strange-recap adventures, I’d like to present:

Our Bookclub Recap – In 6 Haikus

Chips and salsa first
followed by creamy chili
a Mexican feast!

Yogurt and berries
were the intended dessert
(but, some had ice cream)

No music to share,
no complicated dishes,
a simple Saloon.

And as for the book,
the classic Little Women
was enjoyed by all

The movie is great
but Jen and Des have not seen-
something we’ll soon change

Current events time,
only a few to discuss
A laid back book club.

 

Happy January, and thanks for a relaxing book club evening!

Love,

Sarah and little DB
😉

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